


In Other Hands

by Linsky



Category: In Other Lands - Sarah Rees Brennan
Genre: M/M, Monogamy, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 03:59:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13046028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: “Missing your boy, Little Red?” Rachel Sunborn asked.“No,” Elliot said. He was not. He was independent and self-assured and didn’t care if all his friends were off at a tournament without him, throwing things at people for a week for absolutely no good reason and probably getting themselves killed.Or: Five times someone suggested Elliot or Luke sleep with someone else, and one time they didn’t need to.





	In Other Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frogy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frogy/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, frogy! I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> All the blame to a certain someone for the title. You know who you are.

1.

There were definite drawbacks to staying at the Sunborn house with Luke. He was always doing stupid things, like wanting to go to bed early instead of staying up to read like a normal person, or getting up at the crack of dawn for archery practice and kissing you so that you woke up too, or throwing his wing over you while you slept so that you woke up over-warm and bathed in golden light and no archery or reading could get done for at least two hours.

Really, he was a nightmare, and Elliot was glad he was gone.

“Missing your boy, Little Red?” Rachel Sunborn, when Elliot came downstairs from the library on the second day of Luke’s absence.

“No,” Elliot said. Obviously not. He was independent and self-assured and didn’t care if all his friends were off at a tournament without him.

That was another stupid thing Luke did: rush off at the last minute to invitational tournaments where he would probably get himself killed, and argue with anyone who thought this might not be the most brilliant idea anyone had ever had. The list was never-ending, really.

Rachel was going to watch the tournament later in the week, because she was going on a routine mission to the harpies afterward and had to get all her gear together first. Apparently that meant baking a ridiculous amount of travel pasties. “You can give me a hand,” she said, waving a rolling pin at the heaps of dough in front of her.

Rolling out the dough felt like trying to flatten a stone wall that did not want to be flattened. Elliot could just about handle it, thanks to Luke’s dreadful habit (another one for the list) of making him lift heavy things that would have been just as happy staying on the ground. He rammed the pin into the dough and thought: some people used physical activity like this to turn their brains off. Some people didn’t have to think while they were doing things like this.

That had been an interesting revelation, when he’d figured that one out. He understood so much more about warfare now.

“See, I knew you’d be happier if you got out of that library and got moving,” Rachel said, rolling her dough out like it was easy.

This was offensive and a lie. Moving was so far inferior to books. Elliot figured he’d pissed off enough Sunborns for one week, though, and he didn’t actually want to get kicked out of the house. “I’m making really good progress on the mermish writing system,” he said instead. “You know what I was talking about yesterday, about the difference between the subject and the predicate? Well, I realized the mermaids associate agency with water, and so if you isolate the wavy mark that I think is meant to convey—”

“Damn, kid,” Louise Sunborn said, coming through the door. “You need to get laid.”

Elliot’s face got hot. “Thank you, that won’t be happening anytime soon.”

“Why not?” Louise leaned against the counter, elbows in the flour. She was also going with her mother on the harpy mission, ostensibly because the harpies and humans needed to establish more ties, but Elliot was pretty sure it was actually because she shared her mother’s predilection for feathers. “Plenty of nicely shaped boys in the village. Or girls, if you’re feeling flexible.”

Elliot fixed her with a look which he hoped conveyed the depths of her insanity. “I’m sorry, but you have met your brother, right?”

She sucked a piece of dough off her finger. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want you to be neglected.”

Elliot needed to expand his list. It turned out the entire Sunborn family went in for stupidity.

 

2.

Elliot did go into the village the next day, but not to pick up nicely shaped boys or girls. He went because he had run out of parchment, and when he asked Rachel if they had any more, she said, “Hm, we might have a sheet or two stuffed in a drawer somewhere.” At which point Elliot despaired of the entire Sunborn line and went to lace up his shoes.

He should have brought more exercise books, but it had just made sense to leave them at camp. He didn’t want to run out in a few years. Besides, he’d expected to be too busy this summer to be able to write much. It just went to show that it was a bad idea to count on plans like that, especially when they involved himself, acting like other people wanted him to.

Elliot didn’t have any Borderlands money, so he sold one of his spare radios to Rachel in exchange for huge golden coins. He thought she might have overpaid him. He hadn’t said anything; it wasn’t exactly like taking charity. The point was: he could afford to buy parchment, if this village actually sold it.

The village was somewhat of a letdown. There was exactly one shop, if you didn’t count the people selling eggs out of their houses—Elliot didn’t—and the shop was a mess. Elliot didn’t know how anyone in the village even had any possessions, when they had to find them in a shop like this.

He did manage to find a stack of parchment, only slightly curled at the edges, and was bringing it up to the cash register when a farm boy got in his way. Elliot knew he was a farm boy because he had hay in his hair. Not just a little bit of hay: loads of it, the amount Elliot would have gotten in his hair if he’d gone near a hay stack, except this kid had straight hair so he didn’t even have an excuse.

“Hairbrushes are under the pitchforks in aisle three,” Elliot said.

The kid ignored this. “You’re the one who’s staying up at the manor, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Elliot said warily. He hadn’t thought of it as a manor before. He hoped he wasn’t unwittingly colluding in a system of feudal oppression. “You aren’t being oppressed by them, are you?”

The farm boy looked like he’d never had an encounter with that word before and wasn’t sure he was liking it. “Um…no. I was just wondering if…you know, if you might want to get a drink with me. At the pub.”

“There’s a pub?” The main street hadn’t looked like it had two buildings that were structurally sound enough to hold people in them, but what did Elliot know? Probably these people drank under rocks. “I mean, no. No thanks. I’m seeing someone.”

“Oh, I know.” The farm boy dug the toe of his boot in the dirt and did some kind of ducking-and-blushing maneuver. “I just thought, you know…Sunborns.”

Elliot stared at his cretinish straw-filled head until it lifted again, and then he said, “No. I don’t know Sunborns. I’ve never met a Sunborn in my life. Tell me, what are they like?”

Now the boy’s eyes widened, and he looked around at several other hapless locals, like they’d be able to make sense of this one. “Um…but…”

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to buy this stack of inadequate parchment so I can learn to have conversations with people who use complete sentences,” Elliot said, brushing past him and taking the parchment to the cashier, who looked uncertain about what to do with it.

Elliot’s one big coin turned into lots of smaller ones. Elliot did not throw them at anything on the way back to the Sunborns’ house. Elliot would never do that.

 

3.

Elliot knew Luke wasn’t actually sleeping with other people. He knew Luke wouldn’t have done so last week, anyway, and, given Luke’s track record, probably wouldn’t for years to come no matter how many screaming arguments he and Elliot had. Still, it was weirdly hard to concentrate when he got back to the library.

That was a problem, because the mermish writing system was actually massively important. The mermaids were the only people the Border guard didn’t have a solid alliance with right now, and maybe the Border guard didn’t think that was important, but Elliot knew it was. If they didn’t establish regular communication, they’d end up fighting again sooner or later.

The Border guard might want that, actually. That would be one explanation why it had taken so long for them to approve Elliot and Serene and Luke’s assignment to Grayling Lake for the fall, anyway. Luke had thought it was because they were busy dealing with the human bandits who’d crossed over the wall, and Elliot was always willing to believe in administrative incompetence, but then the approval finally came from Colonel Whiteleaf, and Elliot understood. If there was anyone who’d want to stall on assigning Elliot to go learn about mermaids, it would be Colonel Whiteleaf.

He’d probably only approved it at all because it was impossible to say no to a Sunborn. That was probably something Elliot was supposed to feel grateful for, and suddenly he couldn’t stay in the library a minute longer. He slammed shut the book on the mermish encounters of Peter the Cross-Eyed and went downstairs to get some food.

Rachel was in the kitchen. She was leaning against the big butcher-block island polishing a sword—apparently a routine diplomatic mission required a lot of weaponry—and Michael was with her.

Elliot felt a little awkward around Michael these days. He’d always gotten the sense that Michael liked him just fine, but that was before he was auditioning for the role of son-in-law, and he didn’t need anyone else to tell him how unqualified he was for the position. Somehow it didn’t feel like it mattered so much with Rachel.

“I just came from the tournament,” Michael said when Elliot came into the kitchen. “Luke’s doing well.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Elliot said.

Rachel smiled slyly. “He’s been fretting for the past three days.”

“I have not been fretting,” Elliot said. “Luke is obviously very good at the things he does, which doesn’t mean those things are at all worth doing, or that it’s not completely idiotic to do them, and in any case I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Michael smiled in a way where maybe he didn’t totally mean to and Elliot stalked over to the pantry in search of some smoked venison or something.

Michael and Rachel talked about Rachel’s route to the harpies while Elliot ate, and there was something smoothly comfortable about it: like the two of them had had variants on this conversation dozens of times over the years. One of them riding off on a mission, the other helping them plan it. Both of them expecting to see the other alive and whole at the end of it.

“It sounds like we’ll have some extra space in the carts,” Michael said when Elliot’s plate was clean. “We could take another passenger with us when we go back to catch the end of the tournament.”

Neither of them was looking at him, but they were clearly waiting for a response. “No, thanks,” Elliot said. “No reason for me to be there.”

“All right, son,” Michael said, resting a hand on his shoulder, and that was nice, but it was undone by the next thing he said. “You know, I’m sure if you wanted to find some solace here while he’s gone, Luke wouldn’t hold it against you.”

He was gone before Elliot could decide if he actually meant that in the most horrifying way possible. Rachel just kept polishing, chortling into her sword.

 

4.

Elliot was definitely not going to go see them off the next morning. He wasn’t going to right up until he did, and then he let Rachel hug him for several long minutes, and he tried hard not to think about whether that was something he had a right to.

The house was quiet after they left. Quieter than he liked, and it was almost a relief that afternoon when he slunk out of the library again and tripped over Gregory Sunborn.

“I didn’t take these from Rachel,” Elliot said straight off, hiding the stolen pasties behind his back.

Gregory did not seem to care. “Little Red,” he said, a wide grin spreading over his face. “Didn’t expect to find you here. Shouldn’t you be off consorting with trolls?”

“Mermaids,” Elliot said shortly. He liked Gregory, more or less—he was the one Sunborn who didn’t think stabbing people with swords was the goal of all existence—but he wasn’t going to be cheerful for anyone right now. “And it’s not till this fall.”

“Mermaids.” Gregory nodded. “Good for you. You’re going to have a better network of connections than even I do if you keep this up.”

Elliot huffed. Great. That was going to make Colonel Whiteleaf really happy.

“Of course, mermaids,” Gregory went on. “Not always the wisest choice. Not that they’re not—but trust me, if you’re really looking for a species to get, um, friendly with, I have to say, aesthetically speaking, the elves…”

Elliot really needed to stop having these conversations with adults. Older adults. “Excuse you, not everything’s about sex.”

“Evidently.” Gregory narrowed his eyes and looked around. “What are you doing here without that young cousin of mine?”

There were really a lot of things Elliot could say to that. Most of which would not be helpful. “I don’t like tournaments,” was what he went with, which was much better than what he’d said on the subject to Luke. Maybe he was improving.

“That’s right!” A smile spread across Gregory’s face. “Luke was invited to the Summer Invitational. Youngest warrior by about ten years, I think. Quite the honor.”

Elliot needed a moment to marshal the many, many thoughts that all wanted to get out of his head. “See,” he said, pointing a pasty at Gregory, “see, this is why violence is so idiotic. What kind of messed-up society thinks it’s an honor to invite an eighteen-year-old to the tournament with the highest death rate in history? Oh, hey, you made it to eighteen, time to die at the hands of people twice your age! No, not in a battle, that would be too close to logical, we’ll just let you slit each other’s throats for _fun_ —”

Gregory raised his hands. “Hey, hey, don’t lump me in with them,” he said. “I usually go to tournaments for other reasons.”

“Well, I don’t go to them at all,” Elliot said.

“Shame,” Gregory said lightly. “I hear a little tender loving care does wonders for fighters, If you know what I mean.”

Elliot rolled his eyes. “No, I’m deeply stupid and can’t parse that brilliant single entendre.”

Gregory’s smile slanted toward the sly. “Or maybe Luke’s getting some of that elsewhere…”

Elliot stared at him for a solid thirty seconds before whirling on his heel. “I’m going back to the library.”

“Have fun,” Gregory called after him. “But hey, if you want a ride to the tournament, you just let me know!”

 

5.

Elliot didn’t mean to think about what Gregory had said, but he did. Not the last part—the last part was dumb—but the part about how Elliot could have helped Luke do better in the tournament, if he’d been there. Then he got mad at himself for even thinking it: Luke had been the best fighter in the Borderlands for years before he’d ever had sex at all. Actually, it might help Luke’s fighting if he never had sex again. Elliot tried not to think too hard about that.

Anyway, the point was, Luke was an excellent fighter. Elliot had seen him in action enough times over the years to know that—and no, that didn’t mean he should be grateful to Luke for all the times he’d fought for him, no matter what some people might say on the subject, because fighting was a dumb thing to do and Elliot did not condone it. But Luke was going to be fine in the tournament, whether Elliot was there or not.

Still…Luke had been invited right at the last minute. That meant Serene probably wasn’t there either. They did have a weird swordsister bond that seemed to tell them whenever the other was about to be senselessly violent, but realistically, she probably couldn’t have gotten there in time. Luke might be at the tournament alone.

Not alone. His parents would be there by now. He’d be happier to see them than he would be to see Elliot, and Elliot needed to stop thinking about this.

He stayed in the library the next morning and worked very determinedly on the mermish writing system. The tournament would be over soon. Luke would be coming back. Elliot wondered if, in the event Luke yelled at him and told him to get out of his house, Rachel would let him keep borrowing books.

It got hot in the afternoon, and this world was stupid and didn’t have electric fans. Elliot put a few of the books in a pile and went downstairs with the intention of working in the kitchen, except it turned out Adam Sunborn was there.

“Oh, it’s you,” Elliot said with a groan.

Adam looked up with an expression that wasn’t quite unfriendly enough for someone whose last encounter with him had ended in a punch to the face. “Oh, hi! I thought you’d be at the tournament with Luke.”

“Yes, yes, everyone thinks that,” Elliot said. “They’ve clearly failed to comprehend the subtleties of our relationship and certain parties’ inability to deal with things they’ve known about other parties for years, such as the latter parties’ complete disdain for violence, which would be ludicrous to expect to change at this late stage.” He sat down at the kitchen table with his books. Probably he could drive Adam away; he was good at that. “What about you, finally realize tournaments are boring wastes of time?”

“No,” Adam said. “It’s just not as much fun when you don’t get to compete.”

He was sitting at the table with his shoulders hunched, and, oh, he was jealous. It was more satisfying than it probably should have been. “Right, I hear this one is very prestigious,” Elliot said, flipping open Peter the Cross-Eyed’s accounts again. “How very sad for you not to be invited to stick sharp things into other people.”

“I’m not sad about it,” Adam said crossly. His face was starting to look a little more like it should, when he was talking to Elliot. “Anyway, it’s not like Luke’s invitation was real.”

“Uh-huh. It was a fake messenger who came around last week and gave Luke a ridiculous gold-stamped invitation.”

“No,” Adam said. “It’s just that everyone knows it was Colonel Whiteleaf who insisted that Luke be added at the last minute, even though he’s obviously way too young. He, like, felt weird about not including a Sunborn, or something.”

Elliot didn’t point out that if he’d wanted a Sunborn, that didn’t explain why Adam hadn’t been asked, because he was caught up on the other part. “Hang on. Colonel Whiteleaf insisted personally?”

“Don’t get too excited about it,” Adam said. “I don’t think he actually likes Luke or anything. Rumor is he gave him the worst slot in the tournament.”

Something was making an odd amount of sense. Actually…a disturbing amount of sense.

Elliot closed his book again. He looked down at the mermish writing analysis, the project that would connect him—and Luke—to one of the two remaining peoples of the Borderlands with which they didn’t already have a strong connection. The one that would make Elliot more powerful than he was, better able to control what happened in the Borderlands, and maybe someone who he’d previously blackmailed wouldn’t like that so much. Someone who couldn’t do anything about it with Luke’s name and sword standing between Elliot and danger.

“I mean, I’m really just as good a fighter as Luke,” Adam said, coming nearer the table. “I know you think Luke’s some kind of hotshot, but—”

“Is Gregory still around?” Elliot asked.

Adam looked surprised. “I think he’s in the orchard. But, uh—you don’t have to rush off right away. It must be pretty boring for you here without Luke, and, and, I was thinking—”

“Not in a million, quadrillion years,” Elliot said, and ran out of the kitchen.

 

+1.

Gregory’s coach was, naturally, extremely stylish, and also annoyingly slow, which meant Elliot had lots of time on the road to think about how idiotic he was being.

The Borderlands had tournaments all the time. Luke took part in a lot of them, because he was ridiculously good at them, and everyone loved watching him wave a sword around. Everyone was stupid, but the point stood: there were plenty of reasons Colonel Whiteleaf might have had for putting Luke in the tournament that didn’t involve eliminating the Sunborn who stood between him and his professional comfort.

“Doesn’t this coach go any faster?” Elliot asked.

“Don’t want to ruin the horses,” Gregory said with a grin. “But look, if you’re that desperate for it—”

“Don’t even say it,” Elliot said.

They got there in just under three hours. It turned out to be about half an hour too late.

Elliot could already hear the screaming when he rode up to the fort. He didn’t know what it meant, obviously, but his hands were slippery as he leapt down from the coach, and he dashed inside while Gregory was still shouting in surprise behind him.

The way into the stands was crowded with people. Everyone was pushing forward, jumping to try to see over their neighbors, and Elliot heard, “Three on one! Never heard of it—” and “Luke, Luke Sunborn—” and he ran even harder, ducking around people until he got to a spot where he could Luke.

Luke, standing in the middle of the ring, wings spread wide, three fallen fighters moaning on the ground around him.

Elliot stood with his heart beating wildly in his throat while General Lakelost raised Luke’s hand to the roaring of the crowd, and the rest of the Border Guard leadership smiled in fond pride. Colonel Whiteleaf looked like someone had put curdled milk in his coffee.

The people behind Elliot were pouring into the ring, pushing past him. When Elliot finally got close, fifteen minutes later, Luke was down off their shoulders again. He was still being thronged by people wanting to congratulate him, but he caught sight of Elliot through the crowd and his whole face transformed. It was like a ray of sun had broken through the clouds to shine just on him.

“Excuse me,” Elliot heard him say, and, “Thank you, yes, thank you so much, but please excuse me—” and then he was in front of Elliot and Elliot thought of all sorts of things he could say but instead he threw his arms around him, and Luke did the same, and Luke was alive, warm in his arms and not sacrificed to the ambition of evil wannabe-generals.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said. “I should never have said any of that. You shouldn’t be grateful—I should be grateful—”

“Yeah, you should,” Elliot said, and Luke laughed, bright like the sun.

 

They didn’t make it to anywhere private for another half-hour, and even then it was only a storage room in the bowels of the fort. “So, did you watch…” Luke asked, fiddling with the leather cuff of his tunic, like he was trying to be casual about it but utterly failing.

“No,” Elliot said, and Luke’s face fell. “But I heard…”

There are so many things he needs to tell Luke: how he didn’t think the three-on-one was a coincidence, how he hadn’t been supposed to win, how they needed to do something about it. But there was something he needed to say first.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said, either,” he said. “I mean, you do know how I feel about—violence, all that—but I shouldn’t have said it didn’t matter. Because clearly it matters to some people, and maybe I think their ideas are stupid and tournaments should be abolished and none of you should be so eager to go marching off to war, but—” He swallowed and made himself look Luke in the face. “I can’t say it didn’t matter, how today turned out.”

The hope was back on Luke’s face: a smile, small but growing. “So what you’re saying is, you’re glad I’m alive?”

“Wow, way to put words in my mouth,” Elliot said, and Luke laughed and pushed him against the wall. His mouth was warm and sweet and Elliot kissed him and thought: he would have to come up with a really good plan to keep Colonel Whiteleaf from taking Luke away from him, because he was never going to be able to find a replacement for this.


End file.
